When I started doing this survey of Electoral College tracking / prediction / projection / forecast / scoreboard / map sites some 4 months ago, at the end of June, my reason for doing so at the time is the same reason I continue to assemble it now: I wanted a tool which would help me to get a better sense of the state of a tight (and sometimes confusing) race. I think that it's fulfilled that goal, thanks especially to those who encouraged me to start doing averages (which I didn't provide at the beginning, but did calculate retroactively), which turned out to be the key. I've personally found the statistics generated by the survey to be quite helpful in providing benchmarks for comparing things from one week to the next, benchmarks determined by many different people (amateurs and professionals alike) with differing politics utilizing different methodologies. I hope that others have found it to be useful as well.

"Mean" is what is colloquially called "average." All items are added up and divided by the number of items.

"Median" is the center point, the middle value in a list. There are as many values larger than the median as there are values that are smaller.

"Mode" is the number in a list which appears the most times. The "n=" number indicates how many times the number listed appears.

"Joint Mode" is not a standard statistical term (as far as I know). Rather than determine the mode of Kerry's and Bush's numbers individually, "joint mode" measures which combination of Kerry and Bush counts appears most frequently in the survey. The "n=" number indicates how many times it appears.

RANGEKerry max: 325 (297)Kerry min: 153 (153)

Bush max: 311 (348)Bush min: 167 (177)

SUMMARY

According to the data mined from the Electoral College trackers, this was a good week for Kerry. While a majority of the 57 sites surveyed have Bush winning (25 sites) or ahead (13 others), the same majority (38 sites) showed Kerry gaining electoral votes this week while Bush lost them (37 sites). Meanwhile, the number of sites showing Kerry winning quadrupled from 3 to 13.

Kerry has clearly made great strides in taking back a good deal of the territory Bush had reclaimed over the last month, reducing Bush's 50 point advantage of last week to a current 14 - 17 point Bush advantage. (At the moment, Bush has 261 to 266 electoral votes, while Kerry has 247 to 249.) Three sites showed a tie, another indication that Kerry has almost closed the gap with Bush.

(Note: Compare these to the graph below, from Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.)

UPDATES & CORRECTIONS

For a few days after I publish the survey, I'll update figures, make corrections, and add new sites that come to my attention. I'll note these changes here, and mark the entry for each altered site when appropriate.

The next iteration of the survey will be on Monday October 18.

(10/11) The New York Times now has an Electoral College feature which they say will be frequently updated, so I've added it into the survey.

(10/12) Thanks (once again) to Matt Nelson for the pointer to the Electoral College analysis on ABC News's The Note Matt also says that the NYT site has not been consistently updated in the past.

(10/12) I got an e-mail from "Frank Myers CPT ARMOR, US Corps of Engineers Baghdad, Iraq" (who has a website, Citizen Frank) pointing me to his 9/26 Electoral College analysis (Kerry 263 - Bush 274 - ?? 1 - an abstaining WV elector). In the course of doing the survey, I've received a number of e-mails from people who do one-time or very occasional EC breakdowns on their blogs and other sites, and I generally don't include them in the survey because I'm primarily interested in people who track electoral votes over time using an explicit methodology. Otherwise, the survey would become even more cumbersome to do then it already is.

(10/12) I've adjusted Mark Durrenberger's 10/11 figures to account for Maine and Nebraska, the only states at this moment which do not award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in the state. (Some are awarded to the winner in each congressional district.) Mark's current numbers: Kerry 268 - Bush 270.

(10/12) Of all the stats I provide, the mode has been the least useful, because it's possible for the mode to be determined by as little as two appearances in the survey. To help judge the validity of the mode numbers, I'm going to start indicating how many times they appear -- hence the addition of the "n=" tag. I'm also adding something I'm calling "joint mode" until I find out what the actual name for this concept is. "Joint mode" measures what combination of Kerry and Bush numbers appears most often in the survey.

(10/13) E. Alan Meece points me to his no-frills website, Electoral College Survey, where he says he's been tracking the electoral college situation for several months. Currently, his status is: Kerry 246 - Bush 265 -- ?? 27. I'll include Eric's numbers in the next iteration of the survey.

(10/14) Thanks to my friend Shirley, I'll be adding another site to the next iteration of the survey: Electoral Expectations, where the current status is Kerry 273 - Bush 265

(10/15) I've just noticed that the website I've been labelling as "Amoro" is actually attributed to Andrea Moro, so I've changed the title and moved it down to the proper place in the alphabetical listing.

(10/16) Elsewhere on unfutz, take a look at these graphs of the polling in four crucial states.

(10/16) Thanks to Susanna Cornett, who blogs for the Detroit News Online for her mention of the survey, and even more so for her description of me as "hard-working and apparently quite competent liberal blogger Ed Fitzgerald."

(10/16) Another new prediction to be included in the next survey is that of George Axiotakis, who goes by "The Groundhog". Find his latest here (Kerry 301 - Bush 237), and an explanation of his methodology here.

From each website I've taken the most comprehensive set of numbers offered, if possible without a "toss-up" category or other caveats, just Kerry versus Bush. Many of them differentiate between "solid" or "strong", "slightly" or "weak", and "leaning" or "barely" states, but I've combined them all together in order to present numbers which are as comparable as possible.

I encourage everyone to use the links and check each site for the specifics of that site's methodology and presentation.

My convention is that Kerry is listed first and Bush second, bold type indicates a winning candidate (i.e. 270 electoral votes or more), and italics or underlining indicates a leading candidate.

Sites which haven't updated in a while will be temporarily removed from the list until they're freshened. For the first half of October I'll keep a "stagnant" site in the survey about 2 weeks. From the middle of October until the election, that will tighten up to a week at most.

One-time Electoral College analysis articles from the news media (as opposed to ongoing features) will be included, but only for a single iteration of the survey, unless they are replaced by a new article.

As always, if anyone has links for any other sites that regularly track Electoral College status, please feel free to send them my way and I'll be glad to add them to the list. I'm also more than happy to hear from the proprietors of any of the sites surveyed here, should they have any complaints, comments, or suggestions for improvements.

If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.

If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.

(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)

Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.